INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE

Posted on June 13, 2014

INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN A NEW CONTEMPORARY ART WORK BY TOM NICHOLSON, Indefinite substitution

Tom Nicholson’s Indefinite substitution is a participatory artwork that takes place across four different sites around Port Philip Bay and Geelong over four days from the 6-9 July as part of The Cinemas Project.

Indefinite substitution is a work that attempts to re-think the form of the monument, and to address the significance of William Buckley and John Batman in the early history of Melbourne. Wet clay busts of these two figures are repeatedly exchanged between two sites over four days: between Sorrento and Indented Head (by boat across Port Philip Bay) on 6 July; between Indented Head and Eastern Beach, Geelong (by ute) on 7 July; between Eastern Beach and the Richardson Gallery of the Geelong Art Gallery (by trolley) on 8 July; between two ends of the Richardson Gallery (by foot) on 9 July.

The project is also about image-making, in the manner that it involves participants in the activation and appearance of images as they carry the busts of William Buckley and John Batman. In this way, there is also a reference to the movement of images that occurs in analogue cinema as the literal movement of frames through the projector.

Participants will move the wet clay busts of Buckley and Batman through these different landscapes. In holding and carrying the busts, participants will become involved in the production of the ensuing sculptural forms through traces of their fingerprints, hands gripping the busts and so on.